The Devil's Breath by Graham Hurley

age, risking a glance at a window or two. Many of the girls had boyfriends. They’d arrive in the middle of the evening for a meal. When it was hot, they never bothered to pull the curtains, and passing by he could hear the music, and the clink of glasses, and the low hum of conversation, the faces of those same stern secretaries softened by laughter and wine. Beside one basement flat in particular, Friedland sometimes paused, stooping to do up his shoe-lace. The table stood beside the window, and the girl often ate alone. She was small, thin-boned, sharp-featured. She often played Bruckner, the later symphonies. In a certain light, she reminded Friedland of his own daughter, still down in Sussex, still in the nursing-home, as addicted now to Methadone as she’d once been to heroin.
    A taxi appeared at the head of the square. It stopped below the window. A tall, lean figure stepped out of the back, pausing to check the address and pay the driver. A face looked up, blond hair, cropped short, open-neck shirt, light cotton jacket, and Friedland instinctively withdrew into the shadows, sensing at once that it was McVeigh.
    McVeigh stayed perhaps half an hour. Friedland thanked him for coming and made a careful note of what little the man was prepared to tell him. He’d been in the Marines for ten years. He was Arctic Warfare-trained and had done the Mountain Leader course. Latterly, after a fall in Norway and a particularly nasty fracture to his left leg, he’d transferred to the Investigation Branch. It hadn’t been the kind of soldiering he’d joined up for, but he’d been surprised at his own interest in the job, and how good he’d been at it. The clerical back-up was hopeless, but so were most of the villains, so the thing had worked out OK in the end.
    After the Marines, life had been dull. He’d tried to convert apassion into a way of life, tucking away some of his gratuity on the deposit for a small flat and investing the rest in a climbing consultancy. For a fee, he’d lead mountaineering parties anywhere on earth. The idea had been great, but the overheads were crippling and the recession had killed it stone-dead. For the last two years, in the absence of anything better, McVeigh had therefore gone back to doing what he knew best: investigative work, with a modest helping of physical violence.
    Friedland, listening, had been amused. McVeigh, like so many of the Special Forces people, was nicely understated. But there was something else, too. A sense of irony and hints of a rogue mind behind the deadpan voice and the watchful eyes.
    Friedland mentioned Al Zahra. McVeigh said he’d never heard of him. Friedland looked surprised. ‘He says he knows you.’
    ‘Does he?’
    ‘Yes. He says you are very good. Highly recommended.’
    ‘Who by?’
    ‘Friends of his. Fellow Arabs. Chums.’
    McVeigh nodded. He’d often bodyguarded for visiting Arabs, dividing his time between a table in the shadows of various Mayfair casinos and a chair in the upper corridors of some of Park Lane’s more exclusive hotels. It was cheerless work, but it paid two fifty a day. For that money, he also ran errands, volunteering to, collect what one young sheikh from Dubai called ‘the groceries’. The groceries turned out to be a succession of expensive call-girls, some of whom McVeigh now knew moderately well. Maybe Al Zahra was from Dubai, too. Maybe it was his cue for yet another circuit of the flats off Shepherd’s Market.
    ‘What’s he want?’
    Friedland explained, briefly, what the Arab had told him on the telephone.
    McVeigh listened, expressionless. Friedland got to the end of the story.
    ‘So what
does
he want?’ McVeigh said again.
    Friedland shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go and see him.’
    ‘Tonight?’
    ‘Half-past seven.’ Friedland paused. ‘He’s expecting you.’
    McVeigh looked at him for a moment, then glanced at his watch and nodded. ‘Say I take the job,’ he said,